


butterfly wings and sledgehammers

by doomteacosy



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 01:05:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18305042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomteacosy/pseuds/doomteacosy
Summary: In which Amy Preston's sister dies in a car accident when she's 14, and everything just gets worse from there.(Or, that time the prime timeline was Amy.)





	butterfly wings and sledgehammers

**Author's Note:**

> this was written sometime last year as a bit of a response to various fics where they dudes save Lucy.
> 
> (my original note for this was "lmao okay but WHAT IF the prime timeline is amy. lucy died in that car. amy was introduced to rittenhouse by mom and hated it. tried to destroy it. brought back her sister. failed spectacularly. also dated jiya." and... RIP my Amy/Jiya subplot that I cut, lol.)
> 
> 2019, the year of me swatting things out of my drafts with a broom while screaming "and stay out"....

"Hey, loser."

The line is silent for a moment. "That's a terrible way to answer the phone. And isn't that my line? I mean, isn't the older sibling supposed to pick on the younger one?"

Amy scoffs, laying her pencil down on the homework she'd yet to actually start anyway. Phone calls from her homework-swamped, college-loving sister are a rare treat. "Only one of us is cool, and it's definitely not you. 

"Which one of us almost got in a fist fight at school over a book about wizards?"

"In what universe is that not cool?" she says, feeling pretty good about how confident she sounds despite how much she honestly agrees. "So was there a reason you're calling? You're either too late or way too early for any holidays or birthdays. Or so tired of homework that you have no choice but to distract yourself with lowly middle schoolers."

"Can't I just want to hear my baby sister's voice?"

Amy makes a noncommital sound.

There's a long, tangible silence on the other end of the line. Amy would think the connection was lost if she couldn't hear her sister there, breathing slow, measured breaths. Choosing her words in the same precise manner she does everything else. Amy scribbles on the paper in front of her, mindless circles and squiggles melting into abstract faces before she hears her sister take a deeper breath. 

"I think I'm done," she says, and it comes out stilted. Almost like a question.

Amy frowns, waiting for her to clarify, but when she doesn't she prompts her further. "Done with...?" 

"With everything," she says, and then it pours out of her in a rush, like she's trying to fit everything she thought during that pause into the next breath. "With the department. With this stupid thesis. With pretending sneaking off and singing on weekends doesn't feel more _me_. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be this." There's a long beat before her sister cuts in again. "Also, I have a band."

"Oh." She doesn't really know what to say to that. This is the first she's heard of the band, though she thinks maybe their last conversation where she told her she _is_ allowed to have fun makes a little more sense now. 

"Oh god, you think I'm stupid."

"No. If you're done, you're done."

"I know, but mom—"

"Had her own life, and it doesn't have to be continued onto yours. Rebel a little. God. You shouldn't need your little sister to tell you that."

"It's just... it's not _me_."

"So, what's you?" Amy asks, because what else is there to say. It's her sister's life. She just wants to see how she lives it.

Even if the band probably sucks.

-

She's setting the table while her mother expresses her deep, abiding disappointment in her. Again. It's not Amy tonight, it's _Amelia_.

Carol huffs an annoyed sigh when the phone rings, stopping her tirade mid-sentence to go answer and leaving Amy to mope in glorious silence.

On the other side of the room a serving spoon clatters out of her mother's hand and for the briefest moment the entire world freezes. Just long enough for Amy to know. Just long enough for cold dread to spread up, up, up her body and dig in deep in her stomach, her chest, her throat.

And then the phone is back to her mother's ear, and she's uttering tight, single word responses.

Amy doesn't finish setting the table.

-

The funeral is on a sunny day.

Amy wears Lucy's favorite dress. Something blue and old fashioned that she found in a thrift store, its white trim yellowed with age. It's too big and hangs awkwardly on her fourteen year old frame. Her mother tells her to change it no less than five times before giving up and not looking at her the rest of the day.

She's glad she didn't, though. She's glad she has something of Lucy there, holding her while strangers press in and offer platitudes and empty condolences. 

She fists her hand in the skirt of the dress and doesn't bother offering them smiles. 

All the while, the dullest looking man in existence hovers at Carol's side for most of the day. Amy steps past him when he offers his hand, pretending she doesn't notice him. 

-

Her mother is inconsolable after... _after_. Lost.

What mother wouldn't be?

But this was her Lucy. Her pride and joy, her little mini-me.

She was losing her, but she didn't know that yet. Amy half suspects her sister wouldn't have had the balls for it anyway. Lucy was plenty headstrong, but where mom was concerned... _well_. Lucy loved mom and mom spent so long pushing Lucy that she didn't _have_ to push her. She just pushed herself like a little mother-pleasing automaton who had to be reminded to live her own life. 

Maybe now mom will push Amy like that. Try to make _her_ decisions for her. That'll be a laugh. Amy loves Carol, but Amy isn’t her sister. She isn't going to base her decisions on what makes Professor Carol Preston happy. 

(Amy doesn't know yet if she should tell mom about Lucy's plans. She shouldn't, right? She wants to spare her mother and she wants to hold onto the last secret piece of Lucy she'll ever have, but leaving a truth unspoken feels wrong, somehow. Leaving Lucy's truth unspoken feels almost like a betrayal. She loved mom and she loved history—no matter how much she said it was killing her—but she was more, more, more.)

-

If she's honest, Amy resents her for it. For crawling into herself and leaving her with the cleanup. Like she hadn't just lost her sister. Like she hadn't lost the last bit of doubt she had that her mother gave a damn about her.

(But that's not fair, and she knows it. Knows it in the way her mother holds her too close, knows it in the way she hovers in doorways, watching her when she thinks she isn't looking. But there was a favorite, surely, and Amy wasn't it. She's not her quiet little historian. Not headstrong but just loyal enough to bend to her will. She's none of the things that brought Lucy and their mother together, and that silent knowledge sits between them no matter what.)

She might resent her sister the tiniest bit for leaving here alone, too, but that just leads to gnawing guilt, so Carol it is. 

-

She finds an antique locket tucked among her sister's things while rearranging the attic. 

Lucy was the one who got grandma's jewelry and clothes. Shiny knick knacks. They would never have gone with Amy's blue jeans and sports bras.

The locket is decidedly not _her_ , but she takes it anyway, tucking it among her own precious things. 

She doesn't have any recent photos of them together, but she'll make do. She'll find something among the camera phone photos and old family portraits. 

Again she feels their seven year age difference like a knife in her chest. They were as close as any siblings could be with that age difference, but it was still _there_. One moment Lucy was too old to play games, another Amy was too cool to hang out with her nerdy sister who didn't understand her ( _stupid, stupid, stupid_ ). 

They were supposed to have time to catch up with each other. Grow apart and then back together. Become inseparable. 

She shouldn't have to regret being a snotty teen already at 15. She won't forgive her sister for that one, she thinks. And then she laughs. And then she cries. 

-

Mom remembers who she is eventually. After that the headphones stop being enough to block her out.

-

There are voices in the kitchen. 

"We have someone on the inside and... Carol, the advances they're making are incredible. They're really going to do it."

Amy doesn't even think about staying in the hallway to listen to the conversation. She doesn't care, and if she wasn't hungry she would just go up the stairs and avoid the entire situation altogether. Instead she walks straight into the kitchen with no thoughts at all about the conversation she's interrupting.

"Who's this," she asks, dropping her backpack unceremoniously on the chair by the counter.

Her mother gives her a look, but doesn't scold her. She just smiles like the perfect hostess she's always been. "An old friend. Ben, this is Amelia. Amelia, this is Benjamin Cahill."

"Hey," Amy says with an awkward wave, more interested in the fruit bowl in front of her.

When he smiles she realizes why she recognizes him, but she doesn't say. Can't quite get the words up and out of her throat. The empty platitudes at her sisters funeral were easy enough to forget, but the way he hovered around her mother the entire day was something else entirely. Mom could date, Amy didn't care about that. But there's just something uncomfortable about his bland, pleasant smile. 

When he leaves her mother watches her from the doorway for a long moment, but when she finally speaks all she says is, "It wouldn't kill you to be polite when guests are here."

-

Her first semester of college is a whirlwind. It's stressful, and exhilarating, and full of strange firsts and new faces.

And it's freeing. It's freeing to be out of that house, away from her mother's suffocating presence.

-

"Honey, we need to talk," her mother says to her one day when she's home for winter break.

Nothing good has ever come out of "we need to talk." Amy wouldn't even need personal experience to know that. 

Her mother pats the couch and Amy sits as far back as she can, picking up a pillow like she could use it as some sort of shield to block out whatever emotional onslaught her mother tried to unleash next.

"I made a mistake. I've made a lot of mistakes, but... I feel like I failed Lucy. If she hadn't been wasting her time, if she _knew_... who she was, what she could be doing some day... maybe she wouldn't have been in that car that night.

"Our family is very important," she says carefully. "I denied it for too long. Your father...” She takes a breath, shakes her head and starts over. "I wanted you to have normal childhoods. It was a mistake."

It all comes spilling out in a confusing rush. Legacies and power. Rittenhouse. And her place in it all.

Amy doesn't know what to say to that, doesn't even know how to feel. It sounds _wrong_. Her mother talks about it like it's all destiny and greater good, but all she hears is a horror story. She wants to shake her and ask if she's lost her mind, but she just sits there numbly.

"Amelia, this is your chance to _make something_ of yourself. To do something worthwhile," her mother says, leaning forward with a strange glint in her eyes.

It’s ridiculous. It’s beyond ridiculous, it's _dangerous_. And even if the threat isn't real, her mother is part of some bizarre cult that grief has driven her back into the loving arms of.

Amy tries to stand and leave, but Carol grabs her and something shifts in her face. Her mother's grip is like a vice around her wrist and for the first time she realizes she really doesn't know her mother. She's _never_ known her mother.

She forces a tight smile, her eyebrows coming together. "Okay, I get it. Manifest destiny, ra, ra."

She sounds like a scared child to her own ears.

Her mother still sits motionless, something hard in her eyes, and Amy swallows down and forces a smile onto her face. "I'll think about it. Really."

"There's more." She leans forward and moves a lock of Amy's hair out of her face, somehow looking distant even as she looks right at her. "If I told your sister she had to do something, she would have trusted me..."

Amy bites down on a retort about what Lucy would or wouldn't do and sits stock still, waiting for whatever blow her mother will deliver next.

"Switch majors," is all she says, and Amy almost laughs. "There's... a _project_ that they've been working on. They'll need a historian eventually. I don't have as much sway as I used to, but... you need to be part of this, Amy. Trust me. Please."

"You can't just make me Lucy," she says without thinking, and her mother's hand drops away from her face, but she doesn't say anything. 

Amy flees the room, but she knows her mother. This won't go away. This won't stop.

And, god help her, she's grateful Lucy never had to see it.

-

Rittenhouse, Rittenhouse, Rittenhouse...

Her mother doesn't let it go. Carol Preston has never met a barrier she won't push against until she or it breaks.

Amy thinks about Lucy, sitting next to her on the couch, a broad smile across her face as some underdog exposes secrets in some movie, foiling the evil organization and saving the day.

Maybe she can be _that_. Maybe she can make something of herself, do something worthwhile, but in a different way than her mother intends.

Or maybe telling herself that will help her sleep at night. At least for now.

She wonders about the others who are told they'll do "great things" for terrible reasons, and she wonders how many recognize what they're part of. She wonders if some go to sleep thinking the same things as her.

She wonders how much her mother had actually turned away from it, and what would have happened if Lucy hadn’t died.

When she falls asleep, she dreams of clocks and blood and her sister's smile.

-

Amy has always been a model student, despite her mother's complaints—less disciplined than her sister, but whip smart and _persistent_. The history department is stifling, like living with her mother's expectations and her sister's ghost wrapped around her at all times, but she excels all the same.

If not for the desperate, wild look in her mother's eye, she would quit. For herself, for her sister who never got to. But she doesn't think her mother would let her. She doesn't think Rittenhouse is something she can escape.

If her mother won't let her live her own life, she may as well do something with the one she's been given that feels right. 

-

The years stretch and she forgets the sound of her sister's voice when she's angry, the way her hands felt carding through her hair. The curve of her smile when she teased her, and the way it felt when she hugged her.

She still wears her locket every day. Inside is tucked a pixelated photo Amy stole from myspace, her sister frowning at the camera with a single eyebrow raised, and a Christmas photo of the two of them from so long ago that Amy barely remembers it.

-

She graduates with honors.

It feels less significant than it should, she thinks, but she doesn't know how to really celebrate a degree she didn't want with a family that has been whittled down to the hollow shell of a mother she used to love. 

She sits across from her at dinner that night and the empty chairs to either side feel like a cruel joke.

Her sister would have just turned 30. She doesn't know who she would have been, what she would have done, but she knows she would have teased Lucy for getting older and Lucy would have teased her right back. She would have been more proud than mom about... everything. 

Her father would have been in the other seat, smiling at them both. She doesn't know what he would have said. She barely remembers him at all.

Carol tells her how proud she is of her and she wants to curl in on herself and die right there. A mother's love and pride shouldn't make you feel dirty. (Would she have felt proud if Amy hadn't bent to her will? Would she even be here?)

"If you could go back in time and change something, would you?"

Amy feels as if the world has tilted off axis for a moment. Would she? What kind of question is that to ask her, on this night, with the specters of their broken family sitting beside them. 

A week later she tells her she has cancer. She didn't want to ruin her "special day."

Amy isn't quite sure how to feel. 

-

She buries her mother on a warm summer day, and a chill runs down her spine.

 _Time travel_ , she had said in the end. _Rittenhouse almost has their hands on a time machine and with it anything is possible. Anything, Amelia._

That's what it all was for. For her dead sister, who still warrants more of Carol's attention than Amy. 

Amy hopes she hasn't wasted her life on her mother's madness. 

Benjamin Cahill stands beside her at the funeral, his bland smile making her skin crawl. He tells her to consider him family and she just barely manages to not scoff. 

-

Time travel is real. 

This doesn't occur to her until after the spinning sensation stops and she looks out onto open fields that lead to the streets of 18th century Boston.

-

There are things about time travel that she hadn't thought of.

Well, there are a lot of things about time travel she hadn't thought of, because she hadn't thought of time travel much at all. She thought her mother was crazy. She thought it was some cruel joke.

(She thought of her arms around her sister, shivering, wet and so very confused, but she never dared to believe. Never dared to actually hope. Even now... the _consequences_.)

She never thought she'd be standing here. 

It's so... normal. Which isn't that shocking, because people are people are people, but the fact that she can walk beside them... it's still a hard thing to wrap her mind around.

She feels like there should be something more dramatic to remind her that her decisions have consequences. 

Butterfly wings. A misplaced smile.

She wonders if the right word to the right stranger could stop her sister from getting into a car one day.

Anthony claps her on the shoulder with a smile, but Emma is frowning in the opposite direction. She turns to them, a tilt to her chin that says what she's been avoiding voicing out loud: she's tired of babysitting already. "Come on, we don't have time to be tourists."

"Oh, you love being a tourist," Anthony says back. 

Emma gives him a sour look and then, her eyes skimming around Amy like she isn't even there, starts down the street.

-

Amy turns 28 on a gray day in September. 

She's older than her sister ever was. She's lived half her life without her. Without in-jokes and shared history and someone to share her mad secret with.

Instead she's alone, listening to Emma Whitmore complain about how weak Anthony is. 

-

"You can't just kill them!"

"Well, princess, that's what the mission is."

"Actions have consequences. The further back they go, the bigger the ramifications. I'm here for a _reason_ , Emma. I'm not just set dressing and nepotism."

"I have orders. You are in the way of those orders."

"Is that a threat?" she says, coming in closer to the other woman.

"Does it need to be?" 

-

 _Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong_...

She looks at Emma, who is flipping switches on the console as if nothing is different. 

"Anthony?" Mason says, coming in closer to the mothership. 

"There were complications," is all Emma says as she walks past him. 

Amy can't look him in the eye.

She _will_ destroy Rittenhouse. She couldn't live with herself and this life otherwise. 

-

She finds him in, essentially, the spare parts closet, drinking himself into a stupor, and she thanks god for the lack of cameras.

"We can't keep doing this. We need to do something about it. About Rittenhouse."

He flinches when she says it, like it's a curse. Like saying the name means they'll suddenly be able to hear this conversation. "That's fresh coming from you of all people."

She doesn't have a response for that, even though she knew it was coming. He's not wrong. 

"He's not going to fare any better and you know it," she says, leaning against the wall behind him and hoping she'll come off as more confidant than she feels. 

Mason's quiet for a moment. "Jiya then," he says, not looking up from his brooding.

A flicker of something like fear settles in her chest, but she doesn't have time for that. "And what, just let them kill Rufus too?"

He does look up at that. "I was thinking skip him altogether, but if you think a casket is the better option then who am I to argue. Tell me, did you pull the trigger, or was it the ice queen? I imagine Emma, but they do so love you."

It stings, but she tilts her chin up and looks down at him. If he really thinks she would do that, she doesn't know why she would even bother talking to him. But she _needs_ him. "If that's what you think of me, fine. But we need to do something about this before it gets anymore out of hand."

"How do I even know this isn't some test of loyalty?

"You don't." She says simply, and lets it sit in the air between them. The dark look he gives her says this is not a welcome response, but at this point she really doesn't care. This is his bed to lie in. "Some are born fucked—that's me, for the record—and others have this level of fuckedness thrust upon them. That's unsuspecting Rufus. You? You made a deal with the devil and it sucks. So it's time to pick yourself up and figure out how to live with it."

He laughs. "Or what?"

"Or you better start thinking about what you're going to tell Rufus' family now."

"That sounds an awful lot like a threat this time, Amy. I don't think the apple fell as far from the tree as you think."

"I'm just being realistic. Take a risk and do something about it before you lose something else. I can't be the only one sick of this."

He sets the bottle down and turns to look at her fully. "And what, pray tell, do you propose we do about it?"

"We have a fucking time machine, Connor. I'm sure we can think of _something_. "

-

She's 30 when they finally figure it out. Her sister has been dead for more than half her life. It should be a sobering thought. It should stay her hand, because sixteen years could change all of their lives to the point they’re unrecognizable. But still she tells herself this is the thing they need. That Lucy was the clever one, and she would figure out how to help them stop Rittenhouse, when everything they had done so far had failed.

Forget butterfly wings and misplaced smiles. Amy is a sledgehammer, and underneath everything she’s still the fourteen year old girl who lost her sister. After everything that’s happened, after everything they’d lost, the universe owes her this one thing. Even if it was what Carol wanted, even if she won’t have those years they lost. It’s not like their world could be any worse.

It's amazing they listen to her, really.

-

Amy Preston saves her sister when she's 30. When she holds her, shivering and wet and disoriented, all she can think is that she is so, so young.

-

Lucy Preston loses her sister when she's 33, older than her sister will ever be, and no amount of yelling up the stairs will make her reappear. 

Lucy Preston loses her sister when she's 39, a cold feeling crawling up her spine as she watches from the window.


End file.
